The first night, after the show, Irwin took me out to a country bar called The Palomino Club where cowboys drove their pick-ups to pick up. I was amused that this ‘geek’ (Irwin was, after all a tall, gawky guy who looked more like an accountant than a comic or a cowboy) wanted to go there. After a few hours of drinking local beer and being amazed that there were so many people who enjoyed two stepping, Irwin was nowhere to be found. I looked all over the club and there was no trace of him. “Great.” I thought, “I have no idea where the hell I am and now I’ll have to find my own way back”. As I left the club, there was Irwin. Out in the parking lot, sucking face with some girl he had just met an hour or so ago in the bar. “Who the hell is this guy? This is one book you can’t judge by it’s cover”. He got the girl’s phone number and drove me back to the hotel. Most comics would have left me in the parking lot and taken the girl to the hotel, but not Irwin.

The years went by and every time Irwin & I crossed paths, I was always glad to see him. He always had his notebook. He loved to tinker with jokes, figuring out the exact perfect wording for each one. He’d sit there and bounce ideas out, flipping a topic over and over, looking at it from every angle. And most of the time, he’d find an angle that no one else would ever dream of, or that they would just gloss over thinking there was no humour there. But Irwin would just find the tiniest cracks in our society and he had the tools to mine some huge laughs out of them. His bit about being at a party, trying to find someone willing to discuss his new-found knowledge of raisins is a classic. There are a hundred other amazing bits that he did, but I wouldn’t do them justice trying to describe them. If you just search for Irwin Barker videos, you’d be doing yourself a favour.

He had the courage to take this act – one that relied on the audience grasping it’s subtle nuances, without F-bombs or sex jokes – out on the road. Playing in bars, clubs and legion halls, often following acts who had just ‘killed’ with F-bombs and sex jokes, he’d take the stage and start muttering out his patter of clean jokes. There was something just universally likeable about Irwin though, and somehow he’d own just about every stage he took.

He didn’t have to play the bars long, soon he was noticed by Just for Laughs and CBC and also became in high demand for lucrative corporate shows. Between 2000 – 2010, he played every major festival in Canada multiple times, appeared in countless CBC  Radio and TV shows, wrote for This Hour has 22 Minutes and The Rick Mercer Report. Any comic who does that is pretty much automatically hated by all the comics who don’t get to do that, but once again, not Irwin. There are hundreds of acquaintances in the world of standup, and just some true friends. Irwin always made me feel like a real friend and I felt honored to think of him the same way. The outpouring of hundreds of messages and tributes on his facebook page when he died last Monday shows that he made everyone feel that way and that he was he was universally loved among the community.

Three years ago, Irwin was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, one that affects maybe one in a million people, which is fitting. It was a horrible shock to all who knew and loved him to find out that the doctors had given him one year to live. Tribute shows were arranged, a documentary was shot, people called to express their condolences and everyone braced for the inevitable. And what did Irwin do? He wrote jokes about it. “Since the diagnosis, my wife has been by my side night and day to help me … and then there’s the cancer too…”

It should be mentioned that Irwin was actually very lucky to find his soul mate, an amazing woman named Joanna. If I heard right, Irwin got his diagnosis one month after their wedding. What a horrendous thing for her that must have been. I’ve only met Joanna briefly a few times, but the way she’s conducted herself in the face of this storm and the way Irwin would talk about her lets me know that she is of the same calibre he was.

The first time I saw Irwin after the diagnosis, he had no hair and looked as though he was in a tough fight. I didn’t know what to say. But he was so casual and non-chalant about it, that somehow, I was able to deal with it as well. I think he could tell that I was at a loss and let me know that it was okay. A year came and went, and Irwin was still here. He’d go through chemo and have his battles, but he handled it all with grace, strength and humour. He kept working and when I saw him next, in 2008, he had all his hair again and you’d never know he was sick. It gave me hope that somehow, he was going to beat it.

I saw him again last year, he was out playing the clubs, and I had some emails with him in May. He had just taken the train across the country to Vancouver and back. Again I thought, he’s amazing. It’s three years since he was given a maximum one year and he’s going to beat this. That was not to be though. I guess in reality that was a trip to say goodbye to all his family & friends in Vancouver who I know were very important to him. On Monday, June 21, the cancer finally took him. I am going to truly miss him.

So goodbye Irwin. It was a treat and an honour to know you. You really helped me by pointing the way in life, in comedy and in dealing with mortality. You’ve left a huge hole here on earth. I really liked what Terry McGuerrin wrote on your facebook wall last week– “I feel sorry for all the young comedians who will never have the benefit of being humbled by you”.

Mp3 download – Irwin & I on CBC Radio’s “The Debaters”, taking on the topic of whether Winnipeg should be the capital of Canada.

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Thanks a lot for reading. I bet the next post gets more interesting…